The best art is that which holds a mirror to our lives. So if we as a society are aging, so too should the talkies. And here Hollywood teaches us one of the most critical lessons about turning global population aging into a sustainable source of economic growth.

Say whatever else you want to about 2014, here's one thing I know for sure. It had 365 days. And since new movies opened on screens across the USA on a great many of those days, I feel compelled to consider the year in films.

For several months, we became friendly, hanging out together at the producer's office on Park Avenue. Knockout opened and closed within months, and everyone involved in the production went their separate ways.

We see it as a beautiful mosaic, and you're really lucky when it all comes together and you walk back and all those little specks, that Seurat painting, when you step away from it, it all takes focus and becomes one beautiful thing.

The Judge is, in its way, the kind of old-fashioned potboiler -- a courtroom drama -- that the studios made regularly when the studios actually thought there was an audience for films about adult concerns.

Tense and clever, witty and brutal, the script allows a tour de force for two of our great American actors. We watch the deconstruction of these characters' carefully built lives as they are forced to reveal their painful truths to each other.

Black films and artists were an integral part of the lineup at this year's Toronto International Film Festival along with other world premieres. Dramas, genre movies, comedies, romantic films and documentaries positioned themselves early for this year's annual Oscar race.

In the summer of 1983 I traveled from Manhattan to Buffalo, New York to work as a photographer on a movie starring Robert Redford called The Natural. It was a baseball movie, based on a novel by Bernard Malamud who was born in Brooklyn.

Duvall is still at the top of his game and he makes the most of his role. For many that will be enough. But those looking for other elements such as story, believability, and good supporting actors; they will be disappointed.